Too Poor to File (for Bankruptcy)

By

Katy Stech

Apr 14, 2015 5:56 pm ET

A Congressional overhaul of U.S. bankruptcy law may be keeping financially struggling people out of bankruptcy court, but it hasn’t kept them from going broke, researchers have found. A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York puts a spotlight on a pocket of financially struggling people who, researchers say, are too poor to file for bankruptcy after federal lawmakers changed the law in 2005 and made it more expensive. The study was written by economists Stefania Albanesi of the New York Fed and Jaromir Nosal of Columbia University.

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